Monday, March 23, 2015

As soon as the new month's calendar comes out, we start getting asked about the next one. At this point, we can't quite reveal the full April program, but we can hip you to a few standouts that we've so far nailed down. But this is all hush-hush still; just between you and us.THREE GREAT DOCSSEYMOUR: AN INTRODUCTION

We get a lot of book clubs coming through the bookstore. Oftentimes it's a member of a club looking to get to get a book in that they've spun their wheels with at the last minute, but we never judge. Because we think these tiny communities are so important to the larger cultural community of Guelph, we're looking to shine a bit of light on them.

Are you a book club or a member of the book club that would be interested in being profiled by The Bookshelf? The idea is that we would infiltrate your group for one book / session and report back: who you are, how you started, what you read, what your meetings are like.

Being profiled wouldn't be without its discounted perks to your club if you chose to get the books through us, but otherwise the real perk is validation and elevation. It would be a sort of Jostens portrait of your group of readers.If you and your club would be interesting taking part, send an email to contribute@bookshelf.ca

Maybe it's because I don't find the subjects of golf or groundskeeping particularly compelling in and of themselves, but I can't help but imagine that if you excise all the gags and non-sequiturs Caddyshack would be a terrible movie.Take the bobbing O'Henry out of the pool, so to speak, and here's what you're left with: at a fancy-schmancy country club, where the rabble-rousing caddies tug the stiff upper lips of the wealthy patrons, one caddy, aided by a rebellious child of privilege, aspires to rise above his station. It's about as Shakespearean as plots come. That's the A story. The B story concerns the arrival of a gaudy, loquacious, disrespectful nouveau riche – who can't get no respect – to the club seemingly hellbent on enervating the status quo. In the C story, a groundskeeper with an unidentified affliction – possibly an adult version of Benjy from The Sound and the Fury – is tasked with tackling invasive vermin, ultimately emphasizing that any attempt to civilize the wilderness is quixotic.Ostensibly we're meant to care whether or not the young caddy will abandon his class values in order to be accepted by the well-to-dos, but does anyone really care about what happens in Caddyshack? The famous last line of the movie, let loose by Rodney Dangerfield, sort of implies that even Caddyshack doesn't care what happens in Caddyshack. It's maybe one of the best lines in cinema history, right up there with "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.": "Hey everybody! We're all gonna get laid!"Is it a problem that there are no stakes in this movie? Absolutely not; Caddyshack is great. But it's great on account of the dramatically irresponsible stuff. The jokes that add squat to the plot are what we remember, what we quote and describe. No one tries to recreate the tension of Danny's final putt, which is meant to be the climax of the movie. It's the chocolate bar loose in the pool or Bill Murray's "Cinderella Story" monologue that survive. Dramatically-speaking, wacky comedies are odd ducks. On the whole, they observe the basic Aristotelian structure of desire, conflict, and resolution, but this observance is often hollow, like grace said habitually by diners who never give God a thought. Was anyone on the edge of their seat when Danny was taking that final
put? Did anyone gasp when Maggie revealed that she may be pregnant? Did
we stand up and cheer when the gopher emerged mostly unscathed from
Carl's last stand? No. So why have a story if no one's really going to care
about the outcome?Comedic fidelity to conventional storytelling is at first blush confounding,
especially when most comedies are no more than vehicles for jokes. Most contemporary
mainstream comedies end up top-heavy, cramming their first 30 minutes with
premise before spending an inordinate amount of time building to conclusions – Adam Sandler or Paul Rudd-types rushing to airports or
realizing that family is the most important thing – that are nothing if not foregone. No one
watches these movies to see love triumphing over immaturity, but rather to see the lead
get an erection at an inopportune time or let food poisoning ruin a
company picnic. Yet many comedies are stupidly devoted to the illusion of stakes and nearly all fail to make anyone – themselves included – care past the first third. Or else comedies will go the other way and wiggle out of the leash, becoming a melee of jokes that fail on account of not being connected to some structure. Caddyshack is a classic, I think, because it figures out the formula by becoming a kind of meta-narrative. There are no real stakes in the movie, but it manages somehow to remain dramatically interesting. The power struggle presented in the story is between the anarchic caddies and the ordered club members, but the real power struggle in the movie – the reason we come back to the movie – is between the anarchy of comedy and the order of conventional narrative. Most contemporary comedy fail because they either lack or eschew this tension, becoming instead movies about the comedic anarchy being tamed and learning a lesson.

Caddyshack represents a sweet spot for screwball comedies, a stand out in an era of similar temperaments. It has an awareness and an intelligence – whether intentional or instinctual – that is disappearing from comedy. I know that as kids we dream of removing all the grain cereal from Lucky Charms and just eating the marshmallow charms. Of course we eat it for the candy, but it's hard to deny that there's something important about the boring cereal part that no one likes.

More importantly, though, is the assurance that we're all getting laid.

Sunday, March 8, 2015

It's starting to get warm out, but not quite warm enough for our liking. So we're doing our part by heating this week's cinema program with two stand-out films from 2014s Hot Docs.

Advanced Style examines the lives of seven unique New Yorkers whose eclectic personal style and vital spirit have guided their approach to aging. Based on Ari Seth Cohen’s famed blog of the same name, this film paints intimate and colorful portraits of independent, stylish women aged 62 to 95 who are challenging conventional ideas about beauty, aging, and Western’s culture’s increasing obsession with youth.

Have a listen to the Q interview with Ari Seth Cohen and one of his favourite models, Joyce Carpati HERE. And see the doc the 11th, 12th, or 13th at 6:30pm.

The Backward Class is a feature-length documentary featuring the class of dalit – untouchable – caste students to attempt the Indian School Certificate exams and aspire to university.Q also shone light on this heartbreaking, inspiring doc, interviewing director Madeline Grant HERE. And see the doc the 14th at 6:15pm, the 15th at 2:00pm, the 17th at 6:30pm, and the 18th at 9:00pm.

“So, I tell them I'm a pro jock, and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama, himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald... striking. So, I'm on the first tee with him. I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one - big hitter, the Lama - long, into a ten-thousand foot crevasse, right at the base of this glacier. Do you know what the Lama says? Gunga galunga... gunga, gunga-lagunga. So we finish the eighteenth and he's gonna stiff me. And I say, 'Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know.' And he says, 'Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness.' So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.”

- Bill Murray as Carl Spackler in Caddyshack

I’ll tell you, friends, it was pretty hard to not just post all of Bill Murray’s dialogue from Caddyshack into a word document, ship it off to The Bookshelf, and call that the blog for March. The man is that good. If you haven’t seen it, Caddyshack is a comedy classic. If you have seen it, you know what I’m talking about. This month, it’s our Guelph Movie Club selection. See it with us, again or for the first time, on March 26th at 9:00 p.m.As is our sacred monthly duty, we need your help to decide what movie we watch in April. Our theme is 70s movies. It's 70s style epic car chases, drug deals, and cops – clean, dirty and conflicted. We turn back the clock to the decade of investigations, impeachment, and impairment. Use the poll below to help us decide.

Monday, March 2, 2015

Some of you may have taken special notice that our February Cinema Calendar advertised showings of The Imitation Game March 6th and 7th. Hopefully you likewise took extra special notice that our March Cinema Calendar has the recently crowned Best Picture Birdmanin these slots. This isn't a case of playing favourites. Chock it up to force majeure.

We will still be playing The Imitation Game in March, but not until the end of the month. The story of Alan Turing will open on our screen Friday March 27th at 6:30pm and run into April. Sorry for any inconvenience this scheduling flip might have caused.

Because we all need to get out of the house over March Break, and because we all know the weather outside of that house is hardly clement this time of year, we're happy to share our March Break Movie Line-up: